~A Fast Month~
When Ana woke up, Ryra was gone already. She was used to it, but it did still hurt her heart a little to have yet after two years being in a relationship together, to wake up together.
She sighed, and pushed herself out of the bed. She had forgotten to take her assistant devices out of her ears the night before, but it wasn't anything unusual. She was generally a soft sleeper, hardly ever even tossing in her sleep. It made it very safe for her to wear something like a necklace, earrings, anything most people would normally remove before climbing into bed. She felt around and adjusted the positions of the chain for her thin gold chain which held an emerald and diamond encrusted small pendant her parents had gifted her for her recent birthday, followed up by the matching earrings which were slightly out of place. She wasn't particularly fond of jewelry since it was something else to wear, but finally having something of quality she could just leave on was nice.
Ana reflected on her time with Ryra. For the most part, it was just like living with her family back in Canada. She was not fit for work, so she spent more of her time at home, even took her further linguistics courses and programming courses from home. She had spent a lot of time in her home, exercising only frequently to keep healthy after she was dismissed from archery. She spent most of her days on the computer, writing her stories which came to her either out of listening to inspiring other stories, or through dreams, or spending her time playing video games which were able to be detailed enough through the assisting programs that told her enough to understand the game and what was happening in the moment. She would always have something to do when she was on the computer, so it was a familiar place to be. Home, whether in Canada or Japan, was home. As long as it was a place where she could do the things she knew most, a place where at least one person she loved lived there, it was home.
Often though, Ana felt lonely. She didn't really talk to other people. She sometimes talked to her family through text chat, and kept in touch with Ryra, but it wasn't quite enough. She wasn't comfortable talking to people she didn't know, and in person it was worse because of her anxiety. There had been no real reason to reach out for other people. The people that were there for her and helped her through life to that moment, were all she needed to keep herself stable and calm, and eventually find herself back at a point of satisfaction.
The days would pass by as if nothing were different at all. Ana learned more of the beta test of the game that Ryra had brought home and hadn't removed from the house. Ana had contacted her prior contacts through the virtual reality project, and eventually found who continued on. She tried to convince them out of it, but he refused because of the amount of support the project was getting because it was working. He was an idiot. Well...he was an idiot, but he was brilliant. He hadn't managed to take much of the information from the projects she had been a part of, but he had figured out how to get it working.
He was someone...who definitely had some sanity issues, from what she heard of his voice through the voice call she had made with him. He was determined to get his world and story of Sword Art Online to the public, and show the world that virtual reality was possible. For some reason, he stressed the word reality. Like he was conveying a message. The immediate sirens going off in her head told her to report him and have him shut down, but nothing ended up happening. The project continued, he went into hiding somewhere the police couldn't find him, and the month would come to a close soon. When the month would end, the man had already told her he would definitely release the full game to the public. Ten thousand copies would be sent out. Especially the beta testers would be getting their copies.
Ana had almost been pushed to the temptation to go back into the beta test, but to warn the people playing the beta test. To warn them and have them spread out the truth, of how dangerous the man leading the project, and the device itself were, but she was too much an anxious person to go into the game. She was too worried about the game ruining her the next time she would log on, and she was too afraid of facing her anxiety for the sake of the other people playing.
Full of regret, the month continued to pass.
Ryra was excessively busy with her work. She was flooded with patients, normal and strange. She couldn't even get any time in to return home, doing what little sleeping she could get in at the hospital in her office. She had done the routine before, but it had never been so bad. It had never been so busy at her hospital.
As far as the normal patients, visitors mostly suffered having a cold. She had wondered if it was really the case when she had watched a slice-of-life anime in the past, that a cold could be so bad, and she was able to tell the truth. It was just how weak the immune systems were in all of the cold patients she saw. A cold was only as bad as the patient's immune system was weak. There were some accident patients. There were some surgery patients. There were some patients who were being relegated to her as their new main doctor since their previous doctors were too busy with other patients. And then...there was the strange flood of patients. Because of the main doctors being so puzzled and too busy, the strange cases were dumped on her.
These people would have fevers, they would have slight or major delusions. They would constantly talk about something which only confused Ryra more. She had to wonder if suddenly a lot of people with a mental health condition such as schizophrenia had suddenly en masse decided to venture to the hospital for help, but further examination turned up nothing.
Twenty eight days after the last time she was able to return home, she had the last new patient arrive at the hospital under the same strange cases pretense. The last of the strange case patients, was a young teenager. His medical record said he was fourteen. He was at least thankfully one of the more collected individuals who had come to the hospital, but he had similar symptoms. There was more than just the babbling, fever and delusions. His case didn't have the delusions. His case had the fever, the babbling, and the weakness in all general sensation. All his senses were dulled, at least a little. It was one of the least worrying cases, but that was also what she needed in order to learn more about it. She needed a coherent patient, in order to figure out the source of the sudden breakout.
"Hello, Jun-kun. I'm doctor Ryra Winter. You can call me Winter-sensei. Now, can you tell me what started your symptoms, or anything that might have started a little before the symptoms started showing up?"
He was tired and holding a cold compress to his forehead to try and keep his fever down if possible. He looked up to her from the patient seat in the office. There were many eyes like his she had seen in the month, which were exhausted beyond belief. He nodded his head after hearing her ask the entire question, and started mumbling something, which turned into babble for a few seconds, but he caught himself. He removed his left hand from the compress, holding it to his forehead with his right hand, and he pinched his cheek to return his senses to the reason he had come to the hospital.
"Doctor...Eh...Winter-sensei. Um...I suppose this new game might be around a month old now. Maybe I'm just tired..."
He shook his head and was about to stand up from his chair. Ryra finally had something to go off of though, so she told him to sit back down, jotting the new point down on her notes. A new game? There were a lot of new games which were released about a month before. None of them had any kind of health risk warnings on them though, and the people with the strange cases weren't likely tied to the same kind of game unless it were revolutionary. Was there a game released which was revolutionary a month ago? She couldn't think of one. She wondered if she was just that exhausted as well.
"How has your eating been, Jun-kun?"
He stared blankly at her for a few seconds after hearing the new question. The babble nearly returned, but he caught himself and answered her.
"Healthy stuff. My parents make healthy food at their restaurant, and I get that for all my meals. Stuff meant for sick people. Maybe that made me...?"
She shook her head and jotted down the normal eating to the form she had made for the strange case patients. She nodded her head, and returned to asking for another answer.
"How has your sleeping been? At your age, minimum eight hours is recommended, but I'm considering the gaming, so at least six hours, right Jun-kun?"
He shook his head and stuttered out a sigh.
"T-ten hours. But...I'm gaming while sleeping..."
Ryra was immediately confused. There was no game out there aside occult headset experiences which could be played through sleep as far as she knew, and those had been banned for the same reason she was about to explain to Jun.
"There's the problem. No matter how much you think you get when playing any game, your mind is not really sleeping. This means that you're this sick from mental exhaustion. Unplug for at least a week, and let me know how you're doing after that. Eight hours every night. The symptoms of sickness from severe mental exhaustion, are a variety of dulling on the senses, high fevers, delusions, sometimes hysteria and confusion. This sounds to be completely the case. As well, it won't hurt you to unplug for a week. I'll also prescribe you a basic cold medicine to help with your fever."
Jun stared at her at first with an angry expression, thinking she knew nothing about the game he was playing, but the proof stacked up as she explained, and he groaned in response to the closing argument from her.
"The game official launches this weekend though..."
She rolled her eyes at the excuse, but with him saying those words, she had a chilling feeling about the source of the sickness. She wasn't sure, but shouldn't the project have been shut down? She didn't know if it was really the source, but it seemed the most likely when she turned it over in her mind. As Jun stood up, she also stood up and cleared her throat to get his attention.
"This game...you're a beta tester, right? Is the name of the game Sword Art Online?"
Recognition and surprise filled his eyes, and he was nearly the most alive when he heard her mention it. That reaction was all she needed.
"It was even more dangerous than Ana told me..."
"What do you mean by that, doctor?"
He was staring at her with an intensity which told his passion for the game and that it shouldn't be called dangerous, but he had no idea what kind of terrifying information she was about to tell him about the device.
"Ana is my fiancee, and she had some part in a VR project before this NerveGear came around. She never ended up finishing because everything ended up becoming dangerous. She knew right away about the NerveGear being dangerous in the way it operated at all, and confirmed it when she read how the producer made it work. Using radioactive and micro waves. Essentially, one wrong move while the device is on your head, and the waves will melt your brain, literally. If you do continue using it, warn your family that it's dangerous to forcibly remove it. Paired with that it will not allow sleep while in the virtual environment, be sure to not spend too much time on it."
His eyes widened hearing the warning about the waves used by the device. Apparently he had looked into the device enough to understand the possibility. He wanted too much to not accept the danger being real however, so he argued.
"I will sleep properly...but...seriously? Isn't it a helmet to protect us from that?"
She shook her head to answer his doubting question.
"Radiation is far too dangerous for a modified plastic to protect your head through. The micro waves only guarantee it since they're sending the information from the game to your brain while loaded into the virtual environment. I'm only more worried now since you're definitely not the first with the sleeping issue using it. You helped get a lot of people healthy again today, so think on it, and get some proper sleep."
She handed over a slip of paper with the prescription for the cold medicine, and he left the room with the return of his exhausted expression. He shook his head as the door closed, and she sat back in the chair, sighing in relief that she had finally figured out why so many people had been sick. There was definitely the chance he could be the only one, but telling everyone to get some proper sleep for a week, miss the official launch just to be safe, was a precaution that just might save a lot of people. She informed the clerks who made calls out to patients on the waiting list for leads on their health issues, telling them her updated information for them.
She sighed in relief when that seemed to be dealt with, but shortly after, yet another overflow patient was called to be arriving shortly to her office from the front desk. With her own exhaustion, she groaned and cleared up the files on her desk which were now of less concern. She waited for the next patient, and continued to work until she finally had a break to tell Ana about the situation.
[Ryra] "Finally have a break! How are you doing?"
[Ana] "I'm...tired of getting nowhere with those people. I haven't been able to get much writing done at all either because of how worried I've been. And just how busy are you that you hardly have the time to talk to me like this over the last month?"
Ryra sighed again and touched her forehead to her desk. She just wanted to go to sleep, and find herself in her bed at home with Ana.
[Ryra] "Take your pick, and it'll be all of the above, from strange symptom cases being shoved on me to solve, which I just solved an hour ago, to overabundance of the cold season striking, to overflow of other doctors being pushed on me and having me become a regular and family doctor to a bunch of patients...I'm so tired of this. I want to relocate to a smaller hospital and rest forever with you."
Ana had to hold herself back from choking on the laughter. She couldn't laugh without hurting her throat immensely after all. She couldn't help it though. She understood the frustration just as equally and the exhaustion. They were both in a similar situation, and it was finally to the point that Ryra was finally mentioning moving to another place with a smaller hospital. Ana felt sorry for the people who just had her assigned as their new family doctor, but the health of the doctor is paramount to the health of the patients. An unhealthy doctor is detrimental to their patients.
[Ana] "Well, come home soon and we'll pack our bags. I heard of a nice small town north of Sapporo which feels like Canada during the winter a little. Let's research some more together when you get some time away from work. We can find a place we'll both like."
[Ryra] "As much as it sounds like a great retirement plan...it sounds like a retirement plan. I'll make some time and come home for a couple of days. Just...please tell me you aren't considering going into Sword Art Online again. It was the cause of the strange symptom case. Apparently people thought they were getting their sleep while being logged into the game, which caused mass exhaustion. Imagine how surprised I was that was the cause. I warned the patient who was in an hour ago that he shouldn't touch it at all because of the other dangers of it, but he seems like he'll definitely be one of those people who logs in on the first day of official release. Just a teenager. There might be some smarter patients among the older crowd with a little patience to wait out the first day, so hopefully there will be less to worry about on launch day. I just have this dreading premonition that launch day for that game is going to put a lot of people in medical care for whatever reason."
Ryra was excessively nervous of it. It had floated in her mind a little while she was handling the other patients who had been through since Jun had been in. She shook her head and was about to send something more, but Ana had replied.
[Ana] "I had a nightmare about it. That there would be a lot of people who die on the launch day, and not just in the game...I can only guess at the sanity of that person in charge of the project, but it feels like something he might do. Program the game in some way..."
The both of them had a dreading feeling that something awful was going to happen in four days, when the game would officially launch.
[Ana] "...I should tell the police to..."
[Ryra] "Let me do it. We have to tell someone in law enforcement who will do something about this. They just gave up on the case completely when they couldn't find him, so I'll check into if I can get someone more influential involved in this. Cancelling the launch from a law stand point sounds like the only option left. It would make further work toward VR technology illegal most likely...are you okay with that?"
[Ana] "Lives are more important than having a working virtual technology. If nobody will help, I'll go in and do what I can on launch day to warn everyone to be careful..."
Ryra froze at the thought. Ana had merely mentioned the fact she would go in to warn and hopefully stop people from risking their lives, but Ryra was terrified something would happen to Ana.
[Ryra] "No...no! Leave that kind of thing to the police! We'll give our NerveGear and have them do that kind of work! I'm not letting you risk your life!"
Ana sighed in relief that Ryra was so protective of her. With how little often time they spent together of late, she was worried that Ryra might not care as much, but being so assertively protective assured her emotionally that Ana would be fine no matter what would happen.
[Ryra] "Besides, you're really going to have to be careful, because I just cleared up the entire weekend from my schedule. I finally have the time to finish that surgery, and you'll be pregnant. With our baby. It's finally time!"
Ana felt a warmth and a weight in her which made her feel ready as she always did at the mention of her becoming pregnant. She didn't get to keep her first child, but she would definitely be the mother of any children her and Ryra would have together. The very mention made any thoughts of going into Sword Art Online on release day vanished. The launch was on Sunday November the first, so it was likely to be that day, Ryra would finally perform the surgery to transplant the seed from her own DNA to Ana. What was needed for them to finally have their baby. Or babies. They could finally have their family.
[Ana] "Then do you mean the whole weekend by Saturday and Sunday, or do you include Friday in that too? Because more time would definitely be better."
[Ryra] "Friday Saturday and Sunday!"
Ana smiled, and rubbed at her belly through her thin tunic. She could feel the slightly raised scars from her c-section performed when she gave birth to her first baby. The scars had been a reminder for so long that she was a mother, but only biologically. That she would never see her first born ever again unless the adoptive parents decided to let her baby meet her later in life. That she might never get to be a mother. That changed when Ryra returned to her life with her proposal to marry. At first, Ana had given up on finding a good man, and she was attracted to Ryra anyway. The relationship and emotions grew, so she accepted them, and eventually found out that Ryra had a way for them to both parent the same child after they had moved to Japan together. She just needed to have enough free time from her work to make it happen.
[Ana] "I'm looking forward to it."
Ana smiled with tears dripping along her face. Ryra was beaming, feeling that she had made Ana the happiest she had managed so far in their relationship. She felt guilty that she couldn't keep that up though. She could do the surgery, and set their being parents together into motion, but she couldn't give the continued happiness of moving them out into a more comfortable and lesser populated parts of Japan. She was on a contract to work for the hospital she was at for another two years minimum. She wanted to go and find the contract, wherever it was and rip it up if it meant she could make Ana happier, but she and Ana had a similar mind for responsibility. That they would definitely fulfil their responsibilities to the end whenever they were completely possible. Sometimes, she thought, being responsible was unfair.
[Ryra] "I love you, so much Ana."
[Ana] "I know. I just wish you could feel how much I love you the same way I feel you love me. Take care of yourself with work until you get home, and be careful!"
[Ryra] "Of course."
Ryra added a smiling emoticon to the end of the message and ended the current conversation from her end. A buzz had come near the end of the conversation, telling her that another patient required assistance. Her mind buzzed while she waited for the patient to be sent in. Her mind was filled with Ana. Between the scars which connected them and told the stories of her past, there was one particularly large and notable scar on her which told a unique story that Ana had avoided, but Ryra learned about through her medical schooling. She had always known Ana was a wonderful model girl a lot of other girls put on a pedestal, so the scar and the reason for it came as a surprise. More a surprise because of the conditions for the surgery that scar was tied to, age and body compatibility being the most important.
Ana had been born with a male body, but put her body through the immense and painful experience of becoming completely female with the surgery that had only become successful while they were still in high school. The surgery which allowed her to have a somewhat normal relationship with a man, that she had loved before, but he nearly ruined her completely. The surgery that would allow her to properly experience being a mother as she always dreamed of, with Ryra's involvement in her life. Ryra sighed as she thought about it. About how such a wonderful and beautiful woman had the possibility to have turned out completely different. That Ana might have looked completely different. Ryra had the confidence that no matter how their history would have played out, she definitely would have gone to Ana with the same feelings and confess to her even if Ana would have been a man. After all, Ryra loved Ana, not the sex of her body or the mental gender. She loved the personality which shone like a spotlight.
The appointments closed, the next day passed, and Ryra returned home after. She had with her, the ready materials for performing the small, and only non-scarring surgery Ana would have in her life. The one which would make them parents at the end of nine months. Ryra was ecstatic. Ana's mind drifted between the dream come true which was approaching with Ryra's return home, and the worry for the situation in the game, since the NerveGear in their home were still there. The intense sense of responsibility as someone who worked in the VR department for long enough, to warn and protect the people who were throwing themselves into danger. Ana's mind was on a delicate balance. The question was if she could keep her mind on the future and her babies with Ryra ahead of the sense of responsibility.
